As a certified environmental engineer who has worked in the environmental field many years, I would still argue for a YES on I-732. While the Stranger staff has brought up some decent points in this article, we have to get a start on the carbon taxation path somewhere and every year there is no economically driven (& state-sanctioned) reason to cut carbon emissions is another year lacking in any sort of R&D which will be required to put our carbon science on the right track.

R&D spending in the alternative energy sector is remarkably low compared to IT and Big Pharma. Whereas those field typically are spending 15-25% of annual budget on R&D, in energy that figure is close to 0.1%. Why the disconnect? It's because there is no economic reason to cut carbon emissions.

I agree with some of your points on the tax structuring issues of I-732, and it's no good to give companies like Boeing tax cuts when it comes to environmental-related "indirect costs." But for the love of god, we need a monetary driver to decrease carbon emissions! This is a chance for a decent start, and we will surely be coming back to the referendum when if it does pass and changing tax structures down the road.

Think about this editorial for a second. The Stranger really just argued "Plus, if the initiative works—if it reduces carbon emissions—the revenues from the carbon tax will decrease over time too. If, a decade from now, emissions have significantly decreased in Washington, then revenues from this new tax on emissions will have decreased as well—with nothing to backfill that loss."

If this situation did come to pass, it would represent a huge win for the Washington environmental movement! A decrease in carbon emissions of that level would surely mean that we have developed technologies which the state could begin exporting nationwide, if not worldwide, to help manage the most important global issue of the coming century.

Leftist and far leftist environmental movements have a long history of wishful pie-in-the-sky type idealism and it is frankly shocking to me that they would make that mistake again and argue against attaching a tax (of any sort, regardless of tax structuring) to carbon. It's a step in the right direction for the carbon-reducing technological market in the state.

Please be more informed about you statements. Where is the money coming from to perform this cleanup? Are people shouting in a town hall meeting going to provide hundreds of millions of dollars out of nowhere for cleanup? (No) Can you be any more specific than "the toxins"? Also this description of chemical transport is incorrect.

It's a big step forward to be cleaning up a large portion of the Duwamish when you consider how long Seattle has been trashing it. Pollution can remain in sediment for ages; look at Commencement Bay in Tacoma as one example of a Superfund site where that is the case. However, if you ever want to get the pollution out I'd like to hear a better option than dredging (which is closely monitored to prevent sediment transport).

Cleanup like this is a major effort and there are entire industries dedicated to doing it the right way. They're cleaning up areas which are in the budget of the current scope and they're doin a damn good job. Let them handle it.

Sep 5, 2012CapHillGus answered a bunch of weird questions about himself or herself.

This article is entirely America-centric. Caltrop_head is correct; we do not matter anymore in the grand scale. Our infrastructure is already built and emissions should continue to decrease.

China and India will produce the warming, and third world countries like China and India will likely pay a steeper initial price as well with fewer per-capita air conditioners and rations. Could we please include a few more numbers when talking about climate science?